Clutch-less India

India's manual gearbox culture is quietly disappearing, not through innovation and glitzy design but due to traffic fatigue, ease of use and consumer surrender

- RAJEEV NARAYAN

The 'Left Foot' is dead. So is our traditional driving logic. The one that said “left foot on the clutch, right hand flirting across gears, eyes darting to mirrors, potholes and pedestrians with India-level multitasking”. There was a time when manual gears were not just common, they were a culture, a way of life, they were how the 80s and 90s taught India to drive. That life, that drive is gone.

An Indian wasn't a 'trained driver' unless he or she learned to balance clutch and throttle on an incline, stall in heavy traffic, restart with dignity and repeat the process a hundred times before breakfast. The manual gearbox was the great equaliser. Whether you drove a humble hatchback or a souped-up sedan, shifting gears made you feel involved, connected, in charge, auto intimacy at its peak. Imperfect, demanding and occasionally punishing, yes, but gratifying nonetheless.

Across showrooms, manuals are disappearing. Automatics dominate not just premium cars but entry-level hatchbacks and compact sedans as well. Cars that once sold overwhelmingly with stick shifts now see auto variants outsell manuals by a wide margin. Once sacred, the clutch pedal is now an inconvenience.

Or worse, an anachronism; a relic gone the way of India's touted tehzeeb.

India is ready to let go. In fact, it has let go. If there is a single, unassailable villain in the manual gearbox's decline, it is traffic. Traffic in India is not just dense; it is relentless, unpredictable and exhausting. Stop-start crawls stretch for kilometres. Stop signals last long enough to age a knee joint. Flyovers dump drivers into chaos sans warning. In this scenario, the manual is not engaging. It is beginning to be considered cruel.